The Power of Puppets - University of Rochester
The Power of Puppets - University of Rochester
The Power of Puppets - University of Rochester
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In RevIew<br />
ScholarShip<br />
<strong>The</strong> <strong>Power</strong> <strong>of</strong> <strong>Puppets</strong><br />
Pr<strong>of</strong>essor Kenneth Gross explores the theatrical power<br />
<strong>of</strong> puppets to “bring a part <strong>of</strong> us back to play.”<br />
Interview by Husna Haq<br />
Puppetry isn’t simply child’s play.<br />
While American audiences may be more<br />
familiar with hyperactive Sesame Street<br />
characters and a “Disneyfied” version <strong>of</strong><br />
Pinocchio, the puppet in societies across<br />
the world has played the role <strong>of</strong> provocateur,<br />
historian, clairvoyant, and keeper<br />
<strong>of</strong> the faith, says Kenneth Gross in a new<br />
book, Puppet: An Essay on Uncanny Life<br />
(<strong>University</strong> <strong>of</strong> Chicago Press, 2011). From<br />
re-enacting sacred texts in Balinese shadow<br />
puppetry to mocking authority in England’s<br />
raucous Punch and Judy shows, puppets<br />
are masters <strong>of</strong> metamorphosis and <strong>of</strong>ten,<br />
mirrors <strong>of</strong> ourselves.<br />
“<strong>The</strong>y are what we project onto them,”<br />
says Gross, pr<strong>of</strong>essor <strong>of</strong> English at the <strong>University</strong><br />
and an admired scholar <strong>of</strong> Shakespearean<br />
and Renaissance literature. “<strong>The</strong>y<br />
also project onto us.”<br />
During a year abroad in 2007–08, Gross<br />
traveled to Italy, Germany, Switzerland,<br />
France, Israel, and Bali in order to study<br />
puppet theater. He talked with a wide range<br />
<strong>of</strong> artists, traditional and experimental, exploring<br />
literary incarnations <strong>of</strong> the puppet<br />
from Plato to Kafka. <strong>The</strong> result is an elegant,<br />
poetic meditation on the inanimate<br />
objects that we invest with life and meaning,<br />
in an attempt, muses Gross, to tap into<br />
buried pieces <strong>of</strong> ourselves.<br />
How did this book come about?<br />
I love writing about all kinds <strong>of</strong> theater,<br />
and there’s something very elemental<br />
about theater that puppets are able to show;<br />
there’s something very raw and immediate<br />
in watching their movements, gestures, and<br />
artificial life on stage, a life both assertive<br />
and secretive. I also liked the effect <strong>of</strong> writing<br />
about it, what it did to my language. I<br />
found that in order to do justice to this kind<br />
<strong>of</strong> theater, I had to simplify and loosen up,<br />
make my own writing more poetic or expressive.<br />
I had to think more like an essayist.<br />
Were there memorable performances?<br />
<strong>The</strong>re was one theater in Berlin I used to go<br />
to a lot. It was the former GDR state puppet<br />
14 ROCHESTER REVIEW May–June 2012<br />
theater, a remnant <strong>of</strong> the Communist era.<br />
It was like returning to a small piece <strong>of</strong> the<br />
former East Germany. This was in a grim<br />
and bereft part <strong>of</strong> the city, a very small theater<br />
space, and I remember seeing things<br />
that ranged from creepy children’s shows<br />
to a remarkable version <strong>of</strong> King Lear—a<br />
solitary human actor as the king among a<br />
world <strong>of</strong> puppets—with a mixed audience<br />
<strong>of</strong> young artists, children, and old inhabitants<br />
<strong>of</strong> East Berlin. When a show started,<br />
you felt suddenly removed from this<br />
strange space <strong>of</strong> the city, caught up in the<br />
show. What I remember as much as particular<br />
plays is that experience <strong>of</strong> being<br />
completely removed, transported from the<br />
“Puppet” comes<br />
from the Latin pupa,<br />
for little girl or doll . . .<br />
For me, it’s such an<br />
odd-sounding word,<br />
like a child’s word.<br />
environment by the show. Something similar<br />
happened in watching shadow plays in<br />
rural Bali, performed at night on a cinemalike<br />
screen, but here the larger environment<br />
never disappeared. I stayed intensely<br />
conscious <strong>of</strong> the exotic place, the tropical<br />
air, the sounds, the gamelan music, people<br />
coming and going during the show.<br />
What insights does the etymology <strong>of</strong> the<br />
word <strong>of</strong>fer on puppetry and its history?<br />
“Puppet” comes from the Latin pupa, for<br />
little girl or doll—that says something.<br />
<strong>The</strong> Latin term is still used in entomology<br />
to describe the middle stage <strong>of</strong> an insect’s<br />
metamorphosis. For me, it’s such an oddsounding<br />
word, like a child’s word. <strong>The</strong><br />
word was used in Renaissance England as<br />
a term <strong>of</strong> abuse for prostitutes or courtesans.<br />
Iconoclastic Protestants would call<br />
Catholic statues <strong>of</strong> saints “puppets.” <strong>The</strong>re<br />
is sometimes an element in the word <strong>of</strong><br />
something trivial or unserious, or that carries<br />
contempt—as in “puppet government”<br />
or “puppet ruler.” But such contempt <strong>of</strong>ten<br />
pushes away a strange power that people<br />
feel in the puppet.<br />
You introduce a sense <strong>of</strong> morbidity to puppetry,<br />
writing that puppets are “the closest<br />
thing we have in the ordinary human<br />
world to the transmigration <strong>of</strong> the soul.”<br />
In some cultures, for instance in Bali, puppets<br />
spring from death, revivifying departed<br />
souls, ancient heroes as well as gods and<br />
clowns. In a sense, they mediate between<br />
the living and the dead. <strong>Puppets</strong> were <strong>of</strong>ten<br />
used as a means <strong>of</strong> communication with<br />
the dead. <strong>The</strong>y could bring the dead back to<br />
life, give form to spirits or ghosts. <strong>The</strong>y belong<br />
to a kind <strong>of</strong> being that’s neither quite<br />
living nor quite dead. <strong>The</strong>y’re like spirits<br />
themselves.<br />
As objects whose “words or actions are<br />
more able to slip under the radar <strong>of</strong> <strong>of</strong>ficial<br />
censorship,” are puppets also a means<br />
<strong>of</strong> protest, or satire, even subversion?<br />
<strong>The</strong>y have a sort <strong>of</strong> natural gift for comedy,<br />
satire, mockery–it’s a talent that puppets<br />
have. Often they’re amazingly poignant and<br />
serious, as in that version <strong>of</strong> King Lear, but<br />
there is a certain bent toward the grotesque<br />
or satirical. It’s part <strong>of</strong> the uncanniness <strong>of</strong><br />
puppets. Remember that in the original<br />
book from 1881, Pinocchio smashed that<br />
moralizing cricket with a cobbler’s mallet.<br />
<strong>The</strong>re is also a tradition <strong>of</strong> overtly political<br />
puppet theater, exemplified by a company<br />
that’s been running since the ’60s,<br />
the Bread and Puppet <strong>The</strong>ater, now based<br />
in Vermont. <strong>The</strong>y did amazing grotesque<br />
morality plays using oversize puppets and<br />
masks as part <strong>of</strong> Vietnam War protests, and<br />
they recently did a show in New York on<br />
behalf <strong>of</strong> Occupy Wall Street.<br />
You write, “To find life in objects returns<br />
us to life.” What do you mean?<br />
That part <strong>of</strong> us that finds life in objects is<br />
an aspect <strong>of</strong> the child’s imagination and instinct<br />
that is later hidden or sometimes let<br />
go <strong>of</strong> in adulthood. It’s something children<br />
are indeed more adept at, finding life and<br />
voice in objects. <strong>Puppets</strong> awaken that part<br />
<strong>of</strong> us. <strong>The</strong>y bring a part <strong>of</strong> us back to play.r<br />
Husna Haq is a <strong>Rochester</strong>-based freelance<br />
writer.<br />
ZentruM Paul Klee
UNCANNY LIVES: “<strong>The</strong>y are<br />
what we project onto them;<br />
they also project onto us,” says<br />
Gross, whose new book explores<br />
the roles that puppets—like<br />
these by artist Paul Klee—play<br />
in human imagination.<br />
In RevIew<br />
May–June 2012 ROCHESTER REVIEW 15